RE: The New Patrician: English Language Thread

Goods: Production chains should be reasonably complicated. Fish, for example, have hemp, salt as necessities. So too does fur production require hemp and iron goods, cattle/leather requiring salt and timber, beer grain and timber. And so on.

Some of the others should be a bit more complicated, with smelters requiring both iron goods and timber for production, timber requiring some iron goods (who chops a tree down without axes?), and even production of wool having some meat as a byproduct. Wine should require timber, and copper (see below) for the barrels.

New goods: Copper. There should be some required for the production of beer (distillaries), and for building of ships. Production should require wood at a minimum.

Wax. A byproduct of the apiaries, it was used in a number of goods, candles especially.

RE: The New Patrician: English Language Thread

The Shipyard: Repairs, even of a ship of 2% health, require no materials. Absurd, isn't it? Pitch, timber, cloth, iron goods and copper should be required. Few areas built ships. The beginning of the game, the majority of the cities should have repair docks only, where you need to supply the materials if not available in the city markets.

The option to build a shipyard, in the same way we build a hospital or a school, should be on the building menu, with upgrades depending upon use and upon investment in the shipyard directly. As a side benefit, with supplies in your warehouse, you can sell repair and refurbishing services to the other merchants.

Ships should be much harder to acquire, big restrictions on "freebies". In the current game, you needn't build anything. You can take from the pirates over a dozen a month. Abusrd. An occasional auction, of a dilapidated ship from a bankrupting merchant, and personal piracy much harder, with banning of trade with the home city of a merchant who was robbed a frequent penalty; a six or twelve months penalty minimum.

Lastly, in being chased by a pirate, you should have the ability to jettison cargo in varying amounts, for faster speed.

The Moneylender could use an expansion. Besides up to three loans per week, which gets dull, there should be shares offered in a venture to the Med. Put up some cash or goods for an exploratory voyage to the Med, for a share in profits, or get cash for a venture exploration. Buy the rights to sell exclusively a good to a town for a specified period, or the rights to all the town's production of a good. For example, the right to buy all the cloth produced by Malmo for three months. Shares of other competitors should be on offer more frequently, and it should be possible to hold a mortgage on property.

The Town Cellar is fun, but next to useless now. A contact over dinner might lead to a private transaction there, much like the tavern side room. A contract for a bride might be arranged.

If Daniel pops by Amselfass, please tell him I'm burning with desire to help with the translation.

I really like the moneylender notion, BT, and the more complex product chains seem cool. I'd make loans and managing them a sub game of its own.

My thoughts would be, more or less in order:

1) Much stronger macromanagement tools would be great, like an estimate of the amount of goods a convoy needs to deliver to a town per circuit to satisfy its need during Auto-Trade setup.

2) Sliding scale wages for workers. If wages are high in a town, prices and rents can go up in response. New Workers will be more inclined to migrate to a town with higher average wages. Give each class of workers in the city as well as the Burghers and rich folk an average purchasing power. If you really want to get fancy, perhaps the supply of savings can effect the interest rates available at the town's moneylender.

3) Finite Gold/Silver supply. If more gold flows into the town by running a massive export/import surplus with the rest of the Hansa, the AI will be more inclined to increase wages and rents to grab that cash, prices will go up for imports, and the balance will restore itself.

4) Variable Land Taxes for the above reasons, since if the Cost of Living goes up, troopers will want raises along with everyone else. You do not want underpaid troopers.

5) Anything even remotely like a tech tree has no business being in a Patrician game.

6) This is probably wishful thinking, but it would be awesome if there could be a province map for each town's hinterland, kind of like Caesar II, where all Agriculture and Mining needs to take place. This would make sieges that much more dangerous, give the local Princes bases of operation, and have outlying villages where raw materials would accrue and extra finished goods could be unloaded. It would also make roads actually MEAN something, along with canals and less navigable rivers for barge traffic.

7) This is ahistorical, I believe, but it would be awesome if the Hansa towns could take the fight to the Princes, and take over their lands like the Italian cities did. There could then be a mechanic for feudal taxes in the hinterlands coming into the towns and their expanded militaries, the same tax structure increasing the power of the local lords when they are in control of these areas. The power of the Crowns would then become important, since you'd need at least their indifference to take down local lords or face REAL retaliation. Thus it'd be one thing to expand your town's power base around Luebeck or Novgorod, but insane around London or Stockholm or Oslo.

Likewise, permanent Tax obligations to local lords or royals would be an interesting long term penalty for losing a siege.

Captains: As I understand it, no more trading bonus. Great. The price variations between towns are more than sufficient to make money.

Fighting, sailing skills, both are important. I would like to see the ability to bribe into your own employ top captains of the AI, with a negotiated pay raise. Similarly, rather than a simple demand from your own captain, a bit of bargaining about salary ... something along the line of "Merchant Waldo has approached me to hire me away from you. I wanted to see what you would offer me to stay in your employ." And, not all captains are honest. A bit of thievery, a chance to dismiss him for it, or a captain who goes into outright revolt and goes pirate taking along your ship and your goods would make the game interesting. So too would the captain announcing he is going into business as a competitor trader to you.

And we definitely need an arsonist/saboteur in the game. Nothing like a competitor's ship catching fire in the harbor to liven up the game. Or, even your own ...

RE: drunkenscotsmen

I don't really know. It's been offline a while, and I do notice that the nonforum part is still available. Perhaps Mac just tired of it all ... and it went the way of TheCrayer; meanwhile, here is something to whet your appetite: http://www.patrician4.com/

RE: drunkenscotsmen

Hey BT, nice little link there to P4 - I'll pay for it immediately upon release! I was also missing the TSR forum. I'd volunteer to help put that info back up, or help anyone else with it, including $$. Are you going to crank up that Blog of yours?

RE: P 4 release date

Up to date the info from Amazon UK and Kalypso is 08.27.2010. But some mod's from Kalypso wrote in the Kalypso forum that the release will be some time after the german release. So it will be more likely to be September 2010 for the UK version.